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Not only is tptacek completely correct, the Go maintainers are completely against code colorizing, so having visual markers in syntax is quite nice.
by cdcarter 14y ago
Not only is tptacek completely correct, the Go maintainers are completely against code colorizing, so having visual markers in syntax is quite nice.
- tptacek 14y agoThey're against code colorizing?
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoThey mean syntax and semantic highlighting. It's mostly a generational thing that goes along with 80 column line widths on amber terminals.
- papsosouid 14y agoI wonder how much of that is older programmers being used to not having highlighting, and how much is younger programmers having never tried programming without it. I think the default assumption is that it is all old people resisting change (hence the 80 columns amber terminals bit), but I'm a younger anti-highlighting example. I am not old, I learned to code with coloured syntax highlighting. I didn't realize how much of a hindrance it is until after I had been programming for years and tried turning it off.
- waterlesscloud 14y agoI'm old enough to have done both, and it doesn't matter much to me one way or the other. If anything, I think coloring is slightly helpful, but I'm fine without it.
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoSometimes paradigm shifts are just that and indicate generational pivots. Ask an electrician today to do some wiring without color coded wires and they'll think you are batsh*t crazy, but it probably wouldn't have been so crazy a hundred or so years ago when color wasn't viable. The same thing applies to code; these people grew up programming before color monitors were much of an option.
- shrughes 14y agoIt's not a generational thing.
- spacemanaki 14y agoWell Rob Pike did call it "juvenile" and compared it to those colored rods that are used to teach children how to count. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5125958 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5125958
- Jabbles 14y agoHe was joking. But still, it's his personal taste to not use it.
- spacemanaki 14y agoWell his personal taste likely informed the design decision to use capitalization to confer some semantics for a variable.
- tptacek 14y agoI'm not sure I see how capital letters make a language harder to syntax highlight.
- papsosouid 14y agoIt doesn't. But not using one form of visual identifier (colour) could motivate one to use another (case).
- spacemanaki 14y agoIt doesn't, and I wasn't arguing that... I was suggesting that if one were to prefer reading and writing code without highlighting, one might be more inclined to design a language such that capitalization carries some semantic weight. I'm just speculating here. I don't really have an opinion one way or the other, although I don't think anyone's an idiot for having an opinion about it, as the OP does.
- tptacek 14y agoThis makes a lot of sense. Sorry, I jumped the gun with my response.
- sesteel 14y agoI agree that syntax highlighting is useful, but people value different things. Whether a language creator likes syntax highlighting or not says nothing about the quality of the language they created.
- stickfigure 14y agoFWIW, this makes me seriously question the sanity of the Go designers. I spent my college career writing code on VT100s, I'm never going back. I am much more productive with an IDE, and the patterns of colors and fonts are a big part of that. I wonder if Rob Pike is colorblind.